Do you know why it is pointless to sentence a convicted criminal to 500 years in prison? Of course you do! No one can serve a 500 year prison sentence, because no one can live long enough to do so. Do you know why an unrepentant Christ-rejecter cannot suffer forever in hell? He, or she, cannot live forever. Only the redeemed inherit eternal life. The lost, or unredeemed, do not possess eternal life nor an immortal soul. They are not resurrected as immortal spirit beings. That mind-boggling promise is made only to the redeemed. The apostle Paul wrote that “this mortal must put on immortality” (See I Corinthians 15:53). At the very beginning of the sacred record, God states emphatically “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground” (See Genesis 2:7). Human beings are composed of eleven essential purely chemical elements as well as a dozen trace elements – all found in good old mother earth. When God said, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” He knew what He was talking about. (See Genesis 3:19).
The mistranslation of one word in Genesis chapter 2 has led to the erroneous belief that humans are immortal, that they have an immortal “soul” that survives our death and will live on throughout eternity either in heaven or hell. The verse in question is the 7th verse of Genesis 2: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” The Hebrew word that is erroneously translated as “living soul” is the word nephesh. That same Hebrew word is found in Genesis chapter 1 twice, in verses 21 and 24, and is correctly translated as “living creature,” speaking of whales and other sea life as well as the various animal life forms on earth! Genesis 2:7 should have been translated as “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature.” Man was not given a soul to reside within him. He BECAME a living creature when God breathed the breath of life into Adam’s inanimate body.
Some read into a scripture something that scripture is not saying at all. An excellent example of this is found in Ecclesiastes 12:7, which says, “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” The Hebrew word that is translated as “spirit” in that verse is ruwach, which primarily is the Hebrew word for “wind” or “breath,” and that is exactly what God gave Adam the moment He created him, “and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the BREATH of life. That is what figuratively returns to God when we die – our breath. Our only hope of living again is if God resurrects us, returning to us the breath of life. To be continued…..
Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley